"America’s Demise Is Near At Hand"

"America’s Demise Is Near At Hand"

by Paul Craig Roberts

"For years I have been cataloging America’s decline into collapse, not merely economic collapse from economic concentration and the offshoring of jobs and investment, but also the collapse of the belief system that created some unity among a diverse population. Today not only is the economy done for, but so is the belief system that sustained social and political stability.

America no longer exists. A geographical entity exists of diverse peoples and interests, but not a country, much less a nation. The United States itself has degenerated into an empire. It is no longer simply a country with an empire. The 50 states are themselves the Establishment’s empire, and it can only be held together by force.

Earlier in my life free speech was used by liberals to legalize pornography, homosexual marriage, and abortion, all of which were opposed by the majority of the population. This did not stop liberals from imposing their agendas on the people.

Today free speech is impermissible, because it can be used to protest what half of the population sincerely believes was a stolen presidential election. Even attorneys and legal firms that brought legitimate cases of electoral fraud for clients are being punished for doing the ordinary work of attorneys. The same is happening to university professors and to average Americans who exercised their Constitutionally protected right of free speech and association and attended the Trump rally. See for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

In America today, free speech can only be exercised in narrow and controlled channels. It can be used to demonize President Trump and his supporters as “enemies of democracy.” It can be used to demonize white people as “systemic racists” and “white supremacists,” and to demonize heterosexual white males as “misogynists.” Its one other use is to demonize countries—Russia, China, and Iran—that stand in the way of Washington’s hegemony. There are no other permissible uses of free speech today in the United States, an inappropriate name of the country as the country has been throughly disunited by Identity Politics and a presidential election widely perceived by voters to have been stolen.

I have provided for my readers a massive, but only partial, list of evidence of a stolen election. See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

But a simple question suffices: If the election was not stolen, why is it impermissible to raise the question? Explanations that are off limits to investigation and public discussion are unlikely to be true. The reason they are off limits is because they cannot withstand examination. You don’t have to go back far in time to get a long list: Assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Waco, Oklahoma City Bombing, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assayd’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russiagate, 2020 electoral fraud, January 6 Trump Insurrection. And, yes, I left out some, but the point stands without them. A country in which explanations are controlled is a country in which people live in lies.

In America and Western civilization generally, the concept of objective truth has essentially been destroyed, especially in educational and communication institutions. Throughout the Western World the basis of truth has been shifted from evidence to emotion. Emotion has become the important evidence. Objective truth is dismissed as a construct that serves white males. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

In America today everything is aligned against the white heterosexual population. The Democrat left, universities, and media are aligned with race and gender victims of alleged white racism and transphobia. Kristen Clarke has been appointed to the Justice (sic) Department to ensure that employment and promotion policies are aligned with race and gender victims. https://www.rt.com/usa/

Immigration policy is aligned against white Americans. Powerless as a majority, white Americans have no future as a minority. https://www.zerohedge.com

Even if white Americans could escape their insouciance and realize that their country is being taken away from them, they are powerless to do anything about it. With the new domestic terrorism bill on the way, even a protest against dispossession is criminalized as sedition.

There are many interesting aspects of the situation that we could explore. But let’s take only one. The Biden regime seems to be filling up with neoconservative zionists who are agents of Washington and Israel’s hegemony. The pursuit of this hegemony involves conflict with Russia, China, and Iran.

Washington will be entering these conflicts with a collapsed economy and a sharply divided population. Will the real backbone of the American armed forces—Trump deplorables—fight for an Establishment that hates its guts? Will an economy drowning in debt and destroyed by corporate offshoring of investment and American middle class jobs and now by lockdowns that are destroying the remaining pieces of the middle class—small businesses—be able to sustain a conflict with nations more unified and free of external debt and unmanageable internal debt? If so, it will be the first time in history.

How long will Trump deplorables remain docile when they realize that they are being exterminated by being cut off from equal rights, constitutional protection, employment and avenues of success?

As for the Establishment itself, when will its arrogance and confidence be shaken by the realization that it cannot control the anti-white, anti-American ideologues it has created and is itself facing the situation faced by Kerensky, the Brownshirts, and the Chinese Communist Party when Mao unleashed the cultural revolution? Having empowered hatred and having let it out of the bottle, the Establishment itself will be destroyed by it.

Who will the Establishment appeal to when the revolution turns on them? What answer will the Establishment have when they are asked the question Bolsheviks put to Kerensky: “Who chose you?”

- https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Oh, stick around, the fun's just starting...

"A Few Notes on Deflation/Inflation"

"A Few Notes on Deflation/Inflation"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Not unsurprisingly, people want a binary option: do we get deflation or inflation? Unfortunately, reality is messy. Broadly speaking, globalization is deflationary as capital seeks the lowest cost labor, parts and materials, the least stringent environmental standards and the most corrupt governance to maximize profits by any means available (in this case, exploitation and corruption). Wages lose purchasing power as every labor force competes with the cheapest available pool of global labor, and domestic companies must lower prices or face obliteration by the global corporations.

Broadly speaking, financialization is inflationary as the costs of services increase as financialization enables monopolies and cartels to dominate entire sectors. Once they control the sector, they increase prices while lowering quality to maximize profits by any means available (in this case, monopoly, cartels and political corruption). As the profits gush in, corporate monopolies and cartels can "invest in corruption" by using a sliver of their profits to buy political favors and protection.

Financialization lowers the cost of credit to corporations and financiers, giving the largest entities an unmatchable competitive advantage: they can borrow immense sums at near-zero cost and use this money (or newly issued stock) to buy competitors, insuring their monopoly won't be challenged by either regulations (since politicos and bureaucrats have been bought off) or competitors (all bought out with "free money".)

While many hold that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon, real-world scarcities are also inflationary. If you were waiting in a long line at a gas station in 1973, hoping to get a tank of gas at only double the price of a month earlier, you'll know that scarcity is absolutely marvelous at sending price soaring regardless of what's happening with the money supply. So inflation can be driven by either or both monetary and scarcity dynamics.

Enter the pandemic. Needless to say, restrictions in travel and gatherings are deflationary in travel-leisure-dining sectors as airlines lower prices to compete for a shrinking pool of passengers and surviving restaurants suppress prices to attract scarce customers. As millions of workers lose their jobs and depend on unemployment, the insecurity of future income weighs on overall consumption.

Lowering the cost of credit does little for these sectors while rocket-boosting speculation and financialization. The monetary "solution" to deflation is always the same: lower interest rates to zero and flood the financial sector with unlimited liquidity. The resulting stock market bubble and corporate orgy of borrowing and stock issuance are predictable results of unfettered, near-infinite financialization.

But lowering the cost of credit and incentivizing monopolies and cartels to expand their control doesn't actually help the economy. Enabling rapacious monopolies and cartels is systemically inflationary, while lowering the cost and availability of credit also increases the attractiveness of automation as a means of lowering labor costs, a dynamic that is deflationary as lower wages equals lower consumption.

The reality is relatively few gig economy workers earn a middle-class income working 40 hours a week. The large-scale reduction of wage and benefit security--i.e. the transition to a precariat work force--is highly deflationary in terms of wages and consumption, as precariats cannot count on future earnings being reliable or sufficient.

The political "solution" is Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a means of supporting consumption. But supporting the consumption of essentials doesn't magically incentivize innovation or the expansion of capacity and real-world production.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve will continue giving unlimited "free money" to corporations and financiers to increase the concentration of financial and political power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. This fuels the dominance of corporations and financiers and increases the risks of monetary over-reach, which introduces the potential for a non-linear sudden and unpredictable explosion of monetary-driven inflation.

All of this sets the stage for both monetary and scarcity inflation. Monopolies and cartels are free to exploit their stranglehold on the nation by jacking up prices and reducing quality (while the bought-and-paid-for political class theatrically wrings their hands while skimming millions in campaign contributions). This is rabidly inflationary.

Since there are few incentives to expand real-world capacity and production, this sets the stage for scarcities in essentials and non-essentials alike. With Peak Globalization in the rearview mirror, the deflationary forces of globalization are ebbing.

The fly in the ointment is speculative bubbles always pop. All the inflation in the system has flowed into excessive speculation, which has inflated unprecedented bubbles across most asset classes. When these all pop, the results are deflationary as the wealth effect reverses and over-leveraged corporations default and/or go bankrupt.

I marked up this chart of the S&P 500 about a year ago, and since then the market crashed and then soared to new highs (SPX 3,826). The basic message here is extremes get more extreme until the rocket runs out of fuel--something the consensus now claims is "impossible." The consensus is that asset inflation is unstoppable and forever. History begs to differ."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 1/19/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 1/19/21"

○

"Nothing to See Here, Folks. I Mean, Literally, NOTHING"

○

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

○

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/19/21:

"Epic! Today Yellen Calls For MASSIVE DEBT EXPANSION.

 Imagine My Shock! "

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Daily Updates, Jan 19th to 21st

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

"Survival"

"The Coming New Order"

"The Coming New Order"

by Jeff Thomas

"For many years, a handful of people have postulated that those who control industry, finance and governments are essentially the same people – a cabal of sorts that have, over generations, solidified their relationships in order to gain greater wealth and power, whilst systematically making things ever more difficult for the free market to exist.

But why should this be? Surely, corporate leaders are more ardently capitalist than anyone else? Well, on the surface, that might appear to make sense, but once a significant position of power has been achieved, those who have achieved it recognize that, since they’ve already reached the top, the primary concern changes. From then on, the primary concern becomes the assurance that no others are able to climb so high as they have.

At that point, they realize that their foremost effort needs to be a push toward corporatism – the merger of power between government and business. This is a natural marriage. The political world is a parasitic one. It relies on a continual flow of funding. The world of big business is a study in exclusivity – the ability to make it impossible for pretenders to the throne to arise. So, big business provides the cash; government provides protective legislation that ensures preference for those at the top.

In most cases, this second half of the equation does not mean a monopoly for just one corporation, but a monopoly for a cabal – an elite group of corporations. This corporatist relationship has deep roots in the US, going back over one hundred years. To this day, those elite families who took control of oil, steel, banking, motor vehicles and other industries a century ago, soon created a takeover of higher learning (universities), health (Big Pharma) and "Defense" (the military-industrial complex). Through legislation, the US was then transformed to ensure that all these interests would be catered to, creating generations of both control and profit.

Of course, "profit" should not be an evil word, but under crony capitalism, it becomes an abomination – a distortion of the free market and the death of laissez faire economics. Certainly, this sort of collectivism is not what Karl Marx had in mind when he daydreamed about a workers’ paradise in which business leaders retained all the risk and responsibility of creating and building businesses, whilst the workers had the final word as to how the revenue would be distributed to the workers themselves.

Mister Marx failed in being objective enough to understand that if the business creator took all the risk and responsibility but gave up the ability to decide what happened to the revenue, he’d never bother to open a business. Even a shoeshine boy would reject such a notion and elect to go on the dole, rather than work.

Mister Marx sought more to bring down those who were successful than to raise up those who were not, yet he unwittingly created a new idea – corporate collectivism – in which the very people he sought to debase used the appeal of collectivist rhetoric to diminish both the freedoms and wealth of the average worker.

On the surface, this might appear to be a hard sell – to get the hoi polloi into the net – but in fact, it’s quite easy and has perennially been effective. Hitler’s New Order was such a construct – the promise to return Germany to greatness and the German people to prosperity through increasingly draconian laws, warfare and an economic revolving door between government and industry.

Of course, a major influx of capital was required – billions of dollars – and this was eagerly provided by US industry and banks. Heads of New York banks not only funded Nazi industry; families such as the Fords, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc., sat on the boards of German corporations. The Nazi effort failed, as they underestimated the Russian will to fight to the death. (Eighty percent of all German Army deaths were due to the Russian campaign.)

But those in New York were able to regroup and be first in the queue for the restructuring of German industry after the war and, ultimately, profited handsomely. But most significantly, the idea of corporatist collectivism did not die. Even before the war, the same group of families and corporations had drawn up the plan for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Mister Roosevelt was a dyed-in-the-wool Wall Street man and a director of New York banks. In the 1930s and early 1940s, he created, as president, a revolving door that favored large corporations, whilst the average American was consciously kept at the subsistence level through government entitlements. The scam worked. Shortsighted Americans not only were grateful; they deified him for it.

Likewise, John Kennedy’s New Frontier sought to revitalize the concept, as did Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society: Give the little people entitlements that keep them little. Tax smaller businesses and create a flow of tax dollars to the elite industries, who, in turn, provide monetary favors to the political class.

The Green New Deal is merely the latest corporate collectivist scheme on the list. Corporate collectivism can be defined as a system in which the few who hold the legal monopolies of finance and industry gain an overriding control over all others, and in so doing, systematically extract wealth from them.

Today, this system has become so refined that, although the average American has a flat screen TV and an expensive smartphone, he cannot raise $400 to cover an emergency that occurs in his life. He is, for all practical purposes, continually bankrupt, but still functioning in a zombie-like existence of continual dependency. This, on the surface, may not seem all that dangerous, but those who cannot buy their way out of a small emergency are easily controlled. Just create an emergency such as an uber-virus and that fact will be illuminated quickly.

In order to maximize compliance in a population, 

maximize their dependence.

As stated above, this effort has been in play for generations. But it is now reaching a crescendo. It’s now up to speed in most of the former Free World and those who hold the strings are ready for a major step forward in corporate collectivism.

In the coming year, we shall see dramatic changes appearing at a dizzying rate. Capital controls, migration controls, internal movement controls, tax increases, confiscation of assets and the removal of "inalienable" rights will all be coming into effect – so quickly that before the populace can even grasp the latest restrictions, new ones will be heaped on.

As this unfolds, we shall witness the erosion of the nation-state. Controls will come from global authorities, such as the UN, the IMF and the WEF. Organizations that have no formal authority over nations will increasingly be calling the shots and people will wonder how this is possible. Elected officials will increasingly become mere bagmen, doing the bidding of an unelected ruling class.

The changes that take place will be not unlike a blanket that is thrown over humanity. The question then will be whether to, a) give in to this force, b) to fight it and most likely fall victim to it, or c) seek a means to fall outside the perimeter of the blanket."

- internationalman.com

"It'll Do..."

Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?" 

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."

"No Country For Old Men"

"Now That Universal Basic Income Checks Have Started, The Americans Will Go Mad If They Dont Continue"

"Now That Universal Basic Income Checks Have Started, 

The Americans Will Go Mad If They Dont Continue"

by Epic Economist

"The word stimulus is becoming a recurrent term in the American economic narrative, some may even say that it is oftentimes overused. The definition of stimulus according to the dictionary is “a thing that rouses activity or energy in someone or something; a spur or incentive”. In addition to spur and incentive, other synonyms for stimulus are boost, impetus, prompt, provoke, etc. Recently, the discussion about stimulus checks is getting increasingly heated. Every side has a different take and the population also has some pretty strong opinions. But economists are warning that stimulus doesn't always stimulate. In fact, it can cause the exact opposite effect and set us up for an economic disaster.

There's only so much money printed out of thin air can do to actually boost the economy, and after we hit that point, what seems to be a plan to support American workers, in reality, only accelerates our economic deterioration by decreasing the purchasing power of our dollars, compromising our standards of living and the growth of the nation while sending the prices of goods and services continuously up. But most people are not aware of that, and solely thinking about the immediate effects that a liquidity injection could provide for their finances, especially in times of crisis, many are willing to overlook the consequences. 

For certain groups, it can be a life or death matter, but for the majority of Americans that had jobs and prospects of their own before the health crisis started, falling into the liquidity trap might turn them eternally reliant on federal help. And, apparently, this process has already begun, as many have been furiously reacting to the latest $600 stimulus checks and demanding for more. That's what we're going to expose in this video.

Just as artificial stimulants, such as certain drugs, there is a common expectancy that positive effects arise from its use. But after some time, the so-called positive effects of the stimulus lose potency and fade away. Therefore, higher doses and more frequent use of the stimulus are necessary to get the same original results. 

After the first round of distribution of stimulus checks to the population last April and since then, there has been a rising resistance about passing out additional stimulus checks. When the latest checks were authorized, the $600 amount was considerably smaller than the first checks of $1200. Many representatives argued that the first round of stimulus checks to individuals haven't presented their desired impact. The main target and purpose were that the recipients of the checks spend the money, in that way, reinserting it back into the economy, but evidence shows that much of it was held or saved.

As the financial strategist Adam Hayes explained, the stimulus money intended to boost the economy isn't actually making its way back into the economy, so it isn't actually stimulating anything, an event economists call "pushing on a string". “Pushing on a string is a metaphor for the limits of monetary policy and the impotence of central banks. Businesses and households cannot be forced to spend if they do not want to. Increasing the monetary base and banks’ reserves will not stimulate an economy if banks think it is too risky to lend and the private sector wants to save more because of economic uncertainty.” 

Regardless of the warnings of experienced experts, authorities will keep endlessly passing stimulus checks after stimulus checks, increasing the national debt and failing to properly support workers and the economy. Biden's plan will essentially fulfilling the dream of America’s central planners. Those who are subscribers to our channel might already be familiar with the plan by now, but for those who are not, let's just say the plan includes locking down the economy, bankrupting small businesses, and then keep stimulating consumer demand with artificial money. In a finger snap, the central planners took control of the population, the economy, and financial markets.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index increased by 1.4 percent over the past year. But even though prices keep climbing, the U.S. unemployment rate remains at 6.7 percent. That puts the misery index, which is the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, at 8.1 percent. And given that we're on a path that will lead to higher rates of unemployment and higher inflation, soon a misery index above 10 percent will certainly bring much more civil agitation, delinquencies, social turbulence, and crime. 

The quality of money comes from its quantity. The seeds of free money have been sown. Now fruits of inflation are blossoming as our living standards and our purchasing power decompose over the rotting roots of our economic system."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"Go" mad? Pilgrims, that train arrived a long time ago..

"2021: A Year of Bad Luck?"

"2021: A Year of Bad Luck?"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Among the many "interesting" (a safe word to use in perilous times) signs and portents swirling around us, here are some financial tidbits "of interest." Just like in 2000, proponents claim "this time it's different." Back then, the claim was that since the Internet would be growing for decades, dot-com stocks could go to the moon and beyond. The claim that the Internet would continue growing was sound, but the prediction that this growth would drive stock valuations into a never-ending bubble was unsound.

Once again we hear reasonable-sounding claims being used to support predictions of a never-ending rise in stock valuations. They’re perfectly justified by today’s low interest, we hear. There’s always a reason why it’s different this time.

Financial assets as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have hit an all-time extreme. In the "Glorious Thirty" postwar years (1946-1975) of broad-based prosperity, financial assets were around three times GDP. Now financial assets are over six times the GDP. This ratio increased with every one of the three bubbles since the mid-1990s: the dot-com bubble in 1999-2000, the Global Financial Meltdown in 2008-09 and now the bubble of 2020-21. That financial assets are now six times the size of the "real economy" (GDP) is an "interesting" data point.

Despite assurances that "this time it's different," all speculative bubbles pop because they are based in human emotions. We attempt to rationalize the bubble by invoking the real world, but bubbles are manifestations of human emotions and the feedback of being in a herd of social animals. I'm not sure if this even qualifies as "interesting" or not; perhaps it's too "obvious" to be "interesting." But people are all too sure about everything, so sure we’re the masters of our own destiny…

We’ve Forgotten Lady Luck: In our self-deluded hubris, we reckon we've moved beyond the influence of fortune, a.k.a. Lady Luck: our technologies are so powerful and our monetary policies so godlike that nothing as random as luck could ever crush our limitless expansion. Thus does hubris beg for a comeuppance: the greater the hubris, the greater the reversal of fortune, the greater the confidence in our godlike powers, the greater the collapse of our prideful faith in technology and economic policies.

So we've enshrined our hubris-soaked happy story: the virus will naturally weaken, vaccines will conquer the Covid virus in short order, and by opening the monetary spigots and flooding the global economy with trillions in newly created currencies, we'll unleash the greatest boom in history, because it's so righteously "green." We seem to have forgotten that to elicit a laugh, tell God your plans. We confused a sustained run of good fortune with godlike powers that are impervious to mere luck.

Unfortunately for all the true believers in our vaunted technology and human agencies, luck still matters, and after 50+ years of under-appreciated, fabulously good fortune, we're in the first at-bat of a sustained reversal of fortune, for good luck doesn't last forever, nor is it some birthright of technologically advanced civilizations.

Are we ill-prepared for seven lean years of increasingly bad luck? Absolutely. Whatever technology can't resolve, trillions in newly issued currency will: either the magic of technology will work miracles, or the magic of limitless free money will work whatever miracles are left after technology wipes up the spot of bother.

You Couldn’t Draw It up Any Better: If you wanted to script an unprecedented collapse of faith in the false gods of technology and money-printing, you'd outline exactly what transpired in 2020: a reckless dismissal of the pandemic followed by a monumental financial crash that opened the floodgates of free money, which triggered a massive "recovery" rally in risk assets, driving gamblers' confidence to new heights of fantasy. All hail our new secular gods, the Federal Reserve, the most powerful force in the Universe!

Then you'd release miraculous vaccines that promised a permanent resolution to the pandemic and a measured return to the carefree pre-pandemic orgy of debt-based consumption. (Never mind the doubts of some experts about the vaccine protocols).

Then you'd script the opening inning of the tragi-comedy unfolding in 2021: Rather than fading as so many were pleased to confidently predict, the Covid virus has made remarkable gains in function, becoming more contagious and more elusive as multiple variants emerge globally. Rather than conquering the virus, we're unable to even keep pace. The variant ravaging Britain was finally identified in late December, and subsequent sequencing of previously collected samples indicates that it emerged (or arrived) in September.

In the meantime, this variant (and other mutations with similar characteristics) have spread around the world with business travelers, tourists, etc. One or more of these variants may reduce the efficacy of the much-hyped vaccines.

Three Reasons Vaccines Might Not Be as Effective as Advertised: Everything that was supposed to work smoothly due to our oh-so-advanced technological and administrative prowess is now either in doubt or in shambles. Consider the potential for less than 95% efficacy in the vaccines due to the interactions and mutually reinforcing dynamics of:

1) vaccine hesitancy in those who understand the conventional processes of testing vaccines best, i.e. healthcare professionals...

2) the potential for consequential numbers of those who receive the first shot of vaccine failing to come back for the second shot due to unpleasant experiences after the first shot or other conditions such as being overworked, evicted, etc., and...

3) variants further reducing the efficacy of the vaccines in unpredictable ways.

So let's say the efficacy drops from the promised 95% to 65%. Are you in the 2/3 camp who are protected by the vaccine from serious illness (though you may be a carrier and infect others, a possibility that was not tested by the trials protocols), or are you in the 1/3 camp who for whatever reason is no longer protected by the vaccine?

Since we're chasing a fast-mutating virus, there may not be a fast, accurate way to identify who's fully protected and who isn't. Since this may be unknowable, everyone will have to continue the behavioral methods of limiting exposure and transmission of the virus. In which case the vaccines will have accomplished very little in terms of returning the world to the pre-pandemic glory days of 2019.

If we have indeed begun a sustained reversal of fortune, it might be prudent to consider the possibility we're only in the first inning of a sustained run of bad luck.

We might want to consider learning a new theme song for 2021, Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all."

The cycles of human history are amenable to a reversal of fortune. Suppressing discussions about the potentially lavish banquet of consequences set by a reversal of fortune won't actually change the outcome of the next eight innings. It will only serve to increase the odds of catastrophically consequential decisions being made by those at the top of the hubris-heap."

- dailyreckoning.com

○

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Unknown Lands"

Peder B. Helland, "Unknown Lands"

"Enjoy beautiful relaxing music with ethereal voices, 

cello and piano while you let your thoughts wander."

Full screen highly recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"What powers this unusual nebula? CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. 

Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery. One hypothesis holds that an energetic pulsar was co-created that powers the nebula with a fast outwardly moving wind. Following this lead, a pulsar has recently been found in radio waves that appears to have been expelled by the supernova explosion at over 1000 kilometers per second. Although the Medulla Nebula appears as large as a full moon, it is so faint that it took 130-hours of exposure with two small telescopes in New Mexico, USA, to create the featured image."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"The Most Deluded People..."

"There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded

people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.” 

- John Heywood, 1546

"The New American Nightmare"

"The New American Nightmare"

by Doug Casey

"An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.

Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.

Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.

For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable.

As any intelligent observer surveys the world’s economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We’re confronted by economic depression, looming financial chaos, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, a developing police state, and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that all these things could affect the U.S., which historically has been the land of the free.

How did we get here? An argument can be made that things went bad because of miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like. Those elements have had a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can’t be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it’s not just bad luck or inadvertence. It’s because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players.

So is there a root cause of all the problems I’ve cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.

In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person. It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.

The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.

What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character. Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?

What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.

I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.

You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S.. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.

On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.

Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.

Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.

What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.

As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.

But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S.

It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.

Now, I believe, it’s out of control. The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown. The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do."

- https://internationalman.com/

○

Related:

"The Neuroscience of Psychopaths"

"I Am Done – The Voice of the Common Folk"

"I Am Done – 

The Voice of the Common Folk"

by OHMama

"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They’re probably relieved that upstart Trump is gone so they can get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lector would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours. I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f*ck these motherf*ckers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all, mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."

- https://globalintelhub.com/

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"You May Wonder..."

"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."

- Stephen King